Masonic Minutes

By the Masonic Education Committee

Lodge opens. Minutes are approved. Bills are discussed. Lodge closes.

Repeat this twice per month with the expectation of dwindling attendance and apathy.

The preceding recipe is the standard operation of many Lodges and it doesn’t allow for continual interest in attending Lodge or growth to our members.
The Masonic Education Committee of the Grand Lodge of Missouri is embarking on a program to provide an additional ingredient to assist each Lodge in providing information and training to its membership for every meeting, and give our Brethren the opportunity to find a reason to attend Lodge and grow in Masonry.

We call this new ingredient Masonic Minutes, which is being introduced in the spring of 2012 as a framework for each Lodge in the state to concurrently present the same topic at its meeting. The goal of the Masonic Minutes is to provide an off-the-shelf educational program for the Lodge to present at every meeting for the benefit of the members of the Lodge. We are hoping that every meeting will contain an element of new education or growth for our members, and bring about greater interest, attendance, and activity.

The Masonic Minutes will be available on the Grand Lodge website and are envisioned to be used as follows:

Each Masonic Minute program will be posted on the website and assigned a suggested date for presentation.

The Worshipful Master of each Lodge will assign a Brother to be in charge of presenting the Masonic Minutes for the next meeting.

The assigned Brother can then download the minutes and review the program, and he then has the option of presenting the information as written or expanding the information with additional research for the upcoming meeting.

The Masonic Minutes will be presented to the Lodge for the meeting date suggested.

The truly unique part of the Masonic Minutes is that the program for a given meeting will be the same for every Lodge, which means that every Lodge has the same foundational education and subsequent discussion from which to work. This allows a consistent message to be brought forth throughout every Lodge and provide programs with timely topics as needed throughout the entire state. Additionally, this is not presented in a hope of dictating the way that Freemasonry should be interpreted, but more in the manner of promoting thoughtful discussion in each Lodge of what Freemasonry means and how best to set it into action both individually and as a fraternity.

As a statewide activity, we encourage all our Brethren to submit a topic or program for which they have an interest or knowledge. Nothing is too big or small to be considered. While there are usually twenty meetings in a Masonic year, the range of topics for our Fraternity is virtually endless, so we have the ability to have several years of topics from which to present new programs. Programs can include practical topics as to how to run a Lodge, create a budget, or create a calendar of events; historical topics as to Lodge history or Masonic figures; and esoteric topics as to ritual, allegory, and furniture of the Lodge. All of the programs will provide an outline, that while complete and presentable in itself, allows for each topic to be expanded by the presenter depending on his interest, or the interest of the Lodge.

The Lodges that are currently using education in their meetings are seeing a strong increase in not only attendance and membership retention, but also in the amount of activity by the members in all aspects of the Lodge; and it is through Masonic Minutes that we desire to provide the Lodges an added ingredient to their recipe for success.